Blitzkrieg Against Catholics?

Church Members Say Bigotry Is On The Rise. Others Say Attacks Are Aimed At Church Stands On Issues Such As Abortion And Homosexuality.

September 15, 1991|By Amy Kuebelbeck Los Angeles Times

A Los Angeles public television station airs Stop the Church, a controversial documentary about the Catholic Church and AIDS, in which members of the activist group ACT-UP disrupt Communion services at New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral and sprawl on the floor in a ''die in.''

Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder asks, ''How much allegiance is there to the pope?'' in reference to Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, who went to Catholic grade schools and who publicly thanked the nuns who taught him.

National Public Radio and ABC-TV correspondent Cokie Roberts mentions on This Week With David Brinkley that she is a Catholic and is flooded with ''vitriolic'' hate mail blasting her religion.

Is the United States experiencing a rise in anti-Catholic sentiment? Some Catholics would say yes. ''If you say, 'Anti-Catholicism is alive and well,' most people will look at you as if you're crazy,'' said Roberts, ''but it's true.''

A newly formed group whose spokesmen include William Bennett, former secretary of education and U.S. drug czar, recently took the offensive. The Catholic Campaign for America announced at a Washington press conference that it has ''had enough of Catholic-bashing.''

''We will attempt to speak in a level, even-tempered voice - nevertheless, a strong one - to say that as Catholics we don't like to be bashed, ridiculed, made fun of,'' Bennett said. ''Sooner or later, Catholics were bound to say, 'Look, we're tired of being the easy target.' '' Bennett and others are quick to point to comments about Thomas, whose confirmation hearings are under way.

The Rev. Gregory Coiro, a spokesman for the Los Angeles archdiocese, says that suggesting that American Catholics have divided loyalties is as offensive as saying American Jews are torn between the United States and Israel, which ''is always looked upon as an anti-semitic canard.''

Questions about Clarence Thomas' religious beliefs amount to a religious test for public office, argues John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a religious liberties group in Charlottesville, Va. ''If I were Catholic, I'd be pretty upset right now,'' he said.

Other observers within the church - and without - say that, at the very least, prejudice against the nation's 55 million Catholics persists and that bigotry in any form deserves attack.

Arthur Teitelbaum, Southern area director of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith in Miami, sees anti-Catholicism in sources ranging from ''gutter-level extremist groups'' to ''casual cocktail party conversation, which is often innocuous in its intent but is poisonous in its effect.''

''It is part of the mosaic of bigotry that exists in America,'' Teitelbaum said, adding that any form is insidious and infectious. ''When anti-Catholicism raises its ugly head, it is the responsibility of every Catholic and non-Catholic alike to repudiate it and attempt to quarantine it.''

Sociologist, author and Catholic priest Andrew Greeley, who wrote An Ugly Little Secret: Anti-Catholicism in North America, said anti-Catholicism is a ''consistent and durable component of American life.''

''It's this snobbish, 'We know better' intellectualism,'' Roberts said. The idea persists ''that anybody who is a practicing Catholic has got to be a little bit stupid or at least naive.''

A study released in April by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, commissioned by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and the Knights of Columbus, concluded that ''long-term trends in (news) coverage have been less than favorable to the church'' and that ''the language used to describe the church increasingly carries connotations of conservatism, oppressiveness and irrelevance.''

Fringe groups continue to publish hate literature. In May, anti-Catholic comic books were found on car windshields in Oceanside, Calif. Comics by Jack Chick Publications of Chino, Calif., say, for example, that the pope is the Anti-Christ. The Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation, founded in Southern California, has been a well-known distributor of anti-Catholic literature across the United States. One Alamo pamphlet claimed that Pope John Paul II, as a young Polish salesman, sold cyanide to the Nazis for use in the Auschwitz concentration camp. (Tony Alamo was recently arrested in Florida on charges of child abuse and tax evasion.)

''What we're seeing is hatred. Not just hatred, but we're seeing that hatred tolerated,'' said Michael Schwartz, author of The Persistent Prejudice: Anti-Catholicism in America.

Schwartz said that church officials have told him it is unofficial policy to downplay anti-Catholic vandalism or sentiment, hoping it will wither on its own. That attitude is ''extremely mistaken,'' he said, adding that American Catholics should follow the example of American Jews, calling attention to religious prejudice and making it unacceptable.